Railways have asked disabled booth operators to cough up last 7 years' rent or shut shop
Sambhaji Gurav, owner of a phone booth at Dadar, and Baban Rajpoot (in the background) owner of a booth at Grant Road have been forced to close down Forty disabled telephone booth operators at various railway stations in Mumbai have received notice from the Railways to vacate the premises if they can't pay up last seven years' average rent. This amounts to anything between Rs 1 lakh to 4.5 lakh. On Tuesday, harassed booth owners wrote a letter to Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee, threatening to immolate themselves. Sambhaji Gurav, 54, who owned a phone booth at Dadar's (Central Railway) platform no 6, has already been forced to close down his shop. "When we were allotted the stalls, we were not expected to pay any rent. But in 2000, the Indian Railways introduced a policy for all stall owners making it mandatory to pay rent. We staged protests in Delhi and the policy was stayed." However, in March 2007, the booth owners started receiving bills for their stalls calculated from 2002. Baban Rajaput, a booth owner from Grant Road station, said, "We were not aware that the policy was re-introduced since 2002. I suddenly received a bill of Rs 1.55 lakh in 2007, which I can never afford to pay." His plight is shared by Bhagwan Savlani, who owns a stall at Bandra. "My wife, mother and 10-year-old son are dependent on me. I don't have any other means of livelihood. I can never pay the rent of Rs 5,000 per month. If forced to vacate, I will have no option but to kill myself," he said. Local officials said they cannot intervene as it is a policy decision by the Railway Board. "Since some stall owners have already paid, the rest cannot be treated differently," a railway official from Mumbai said. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------- Phone booth story In 1981, the Indian Railways had allotted 175 telephone booths to disabled persons on many Mumbai railway stations for free, as per the United Nations declaration of 'International Year of Disabled Persons'. But with the mobile phone boom, the booth owners steadily kept losing business till just a small fraction survived. Information transmitted by this e-mail is proprietary to MphasiS, its associated companies and/ or its customers and is intended for use only by the individual or entity to which it is addressed, and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or it appears that this mail has been forwarded to you without proper authority, you are notified that any use or dissemination of this information in any manner is strictly prohibited. In such cases, please notify us immediately at [email protected] and delete this mail from your records. To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
